The Skaarn witch had made her lair deep in the darkest, oldest parts of the Weald. Brother Marten doubted if he could have sniffed her out on his own, much less get past her morbid sentries.
Brother Marten was far from alone, though, and the flesh-witch’s wards and constructs of warped flesh and bone were nothing compared to the power of the otherworldly entity he carried within him. His dark guest. The fiends that roamed the deep woods around the fleshwarper’s underground lair had simply cowered away at its mere presence. That was good. Marten didn’t want to have to undo any of the Skaarn’s grotesque handiwork.
No - he wanted to use it for his own purposes.
The mouth of the cavern that swallowed him was pitch-black, unnaturally so. He found it oddly fitting that the flesh-witch would choose it for her lair. What had been interred there, deep under the Weald, was ancient. Baleful. Powerful. Even if the Brennai strived to forget the Old Ways, there would always be those who wouldn’t shy away.
Not that the Skaarn had been foolhardy enough to poke at it. Not yet, at least.
The dark, twisting tunnel took him deeper underground, to the cavern the flesh-witch called home. It was a crude, sprawling space carved out of rock and dirt, with jagged walls that seemed to close in on themselves. Flickering light came from makeshift torches jammed into cracks, their flames sputtering weakly, casting long, twisted shadows over the cavern. Not that he needed their sickly illumination. His dark guest’s gifts made the darkest night look as bright as a spring morning.
In the center, a large stone slab served as a workbench, stained dark with old blood. Around it, rusted tools, mismatched bones, and decaying flesh were scattered haphazardly. Strung-up animal hides and patchwork curtains separated sections of the lair, where half-finished abominations lay in various stages of creation. The air was thick with the stench of rot and sweat, as the witch's twisted magic clung to every surface.
“Show yourself, Skaarn,” Brother Marten raised his voice. “We need not be enemies, you and I.”
With the heightened senses granted by his dark guest, he could feel several of the Skaarn’s creations skittering along the ceiling above. Their long, sinewy appendages were coiled like scorpions' tails, poised to strike at any moment. He acted as if he hadn’t noticed their presence.
The Skaarn herself emerged behind one of the curtains. She wasn’t what Marten had expected. She stood tall and imposing, with broad shoulders and muscled arms. Her body, though warped by her craft, still carried the weight and presence of someone used to hard labor. Her skin, though altered, retained the deep, earthy tone of one born in the far south, now marred with faint scars and patches of rough, uneven texture from her magic. She had a strong jawline and a face framed by wild, short hair streaked with silver, though what her age was, Marten found impossible to place. She wore piecemeal armor and rough-spun fabric, likely the remnants of an old life stitched together with new, cruder materials. Her hands, thick-fingered and calloused, were lined with faint scars, but the fingers now ended in thick, claw-like nails - functional, not decorative.
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“Speak your piece, shaman,” she spoke in a deep and gravelly voice. Her accent had a lilting, foreign edge, the vowels stretched and the consonants softened.
The Skaarn’s very presence oozed something unsettling, acrimonious. Brother Marten felt his dark guest stir with excitement. Would the entity betray him, toss him aside in favor of another host? Marten steeled himself, angered at the thought.
“You trespass,” he told her, voice lined with thinly-veiled menace.
“Is that so?” she squinted, studying him. “What of it?”
“What is your business here?”
“What is it to you, shaman? I’ve left your people be. I suggest you turn tail and do the same.”
“My people?” Marten raised an eyebrow. “You misunderstand.”
“Get to the point, shaman. Do not waste my time.”
Marten started to slowly walk toward the stone slab at the center of the cavern, giving the fleshwarper a wide berth. He had to make his point. She glared at him, ready to unleash who-knew-what at a moment’s notice.
Hovering over the blood-drenched stone, he poked a rusty butcher cleaver with the tip of a long finger, as if in disgust. She took a step closer, but she didn’t strike.
Good.
He rifled through a few more grisly gimcracks - bits of wire, knitting needles, embalming tools scavenged from some old tomb. Everything was caked in blood, fat, and grime.
“By the Ancestors, woman. Is this how you do your work?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” she spat at him, “this place is hardly one of the Royal Laboratories of Lillevac. Not that any of you sheep-diddlers would have seen the inside of one.”
“Your words wound my heart of hearts, Skaarn. Still, it is a pity. Your talent is obviously considerable.”
A lie. Marten was no fleshwarper himself, but had seen enough of the Carmine Art to know that any half-baked Skaarn able to follow simple instructions could craft Misbegotten like the ones guarding her lair. Sister Finch had, and she was no sage. Still, it was the time to placate her.
“Imagine what you could achieve, for example,” he went on, “if you could get your hands on the Crucible of Morwain.”
That instantly drew a reaction from the Skaarn, though she did well trying to hide it. Morwain, the Carmine Sage, had been the original Skaarn, the one responsible for the creation and spread of the art of fleshwarping and its various related Paths.
“Yes,” the flesh-witch snorted. “And maybe Ul-Taugh’s tools too, no? If you knew half as much about the Art as you think you do, shaman, you’d know the Crucible was lost to the ages.”
“...or so its keepers would like you to believe,” Marten said, flicking a tiny bit of rotten flesh off his fingernail.
The Skaarn studied him for a few long moments, trying to decide whether to listen further or to sic her creations on him.
“You jest,” she finally concluded, but her tone left ample room for wiggling.
“Jest? Hardly. It’s locked away in a hidden vault, not three days away. I know how to get it. Help me accomplish my own goals, and it’s yours.”
In Marten’s eyes, followers of the Paths of the Carmine Arts were an imprudent lot by definition. Their knowledge came at a cost. Their hunger for power trumped their common sense, or they would never have bartered their essence over to the Carmine King, Him Who Basks in Blood.
A bunch of fools, the lot of them
As it turned out, this one was no different.
“Talk,” she told him, dark eyes shining with greed.
His dark guest stirred, satisfied.
And Marten started talking.